Gerald D'Cunha

  “We are very good lawyers for our own mistakes, but very good judges for mistakes of others.” Anonymous     S ome days ago, while I was in my hometown, one of our relatives sent a personal WhatsApp message to me. The message contained only six simple words. Incidentally, when the message arrived, there were six of us in the room. When I first read the message, I derived a certain meaning out of it. I read it again and derived a different meaning… I read it a couple of times more, and, each time, the meaning I was deriving kept changing. I was curious, if others around me would get a similar experience… Every one’s interpretation was different, every time they read it! I thought in my mind, that the proverbial elephant had come to our room… and we were the six blind men trying to touch a part of the elephant and arrive at our own conclusions: Elephant was like a rope… Like a wall… Like a tree-trunk… Like a fan and so on. There had to be a wise man to tell the...

  “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion, still.” Dale Carnegie in ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’   I was born into a Roman Catholic family. By virtue of it, I have been following certain deity and saints, and practicing certain customs, eating and dressing habits. Similarly, over time, I have leaned towards certain political ideology and followed certain leaders.   But, which God I worship or which political leader I support, I think, I should keep it private, unless I have an aggressive evangelistic or political agenda. I have none… I wish to have none. But, let me make it clear: To follow a certain religious or political ideology is my basic human-right. At the same time, I believe, that it’s my basic human-duty to respect others’ basic human-rights… To me, that’s being civilized… Live and let live. Trouble starts, when I try to demean ‘publicly’ what others believe in and practice. That’s like stirring up the hornet’s nest… Da...

  Only by examining our personal biases can we grow as artists; Only by cultivating empathy can we grow as people.” Jen Knox   W e all have compassion in our hearts. When I put myself in other people’s shoes - feel and understand their pain – yes, this kind of compassionate feeling is known as ‘empathy’. But, the kind of empathy, which most of us display in our lives is only selective. If you are not on my side of the divide, then, your pain doesn’t ache me… My heart doesn’t care. Why? Because, you are not on my side. So, I don’t cry for justice for you… I don’t think, you have been harmed… and, worse, I even find a sadistic pleasure seeing you suffer. On the other hand, if you are on my side of the divide, even the mildest pain to you can cause a turmoil in me; I am ready to pick up the flag… for you … against those who have harmed you… This is the kind of empathy that is rampant today… It’s ‘Selective Empathy’, not ‘Universal Empathy’! Let’s be honest on these ...

  “ In Beverly Hills… They don’t throw their garbage away; they make it into television shows.” Woody Allen   A couple of nights ago, I wanted to talk to one of my friends. It was around 11.45 in the night. So, even though he was my friend, I was a bit apprehensive about calling him at that time of the night. So, I texted him, saying, that if he was still awake, I wanted to talk on something urgent. He immediately called me. “Sorry for disturbing you at this time;” I said, “I really thought, that you had gone off to sleep.” My friend, who is in his early fifties, lives alone in the house. These are Covid times; and to many of us, despite being surrounded by our family members, these have been quite lonely and scary times. I have been concerned about my friend, and, have enquired about him several times. When I called him late that night, he sounded charged up… The reason? He was deeply involved in one of the T.V. debates on Sushant Singh Rajput… “Whatever people...

“ I f you cannot treat someone with dignity and respect – then, you need to get out. If you cannot treat someone from another gender, whether that’s a man or a woman, with dignity and respect – then, you need to get out. If you demean someone in anyway – then, you need to get out. And, if you can’t treat someone from another race or of a different colour skin, with dignity and respect – then, you need to get out.” Do you want to know who said this? Watch this… About three years ago, when Lt. Gen. Jay B. Silveria, the Superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy, stood before his staff, coaches and cadets – over five thousand of them – to let all of them know what it took to ‘develop character’ and grow to be a ‘leader with heart’. He was responding to a disturbing incident at the academy… A couple of Afro-American cadets had been the target of a racial slur… The poison was spit on the room-doors of these Black cadets! Imagine this: t...

“An intellectual hatred is the worst” William Butler Yeast T he first thing I happened to see on my mobile screen, this morning, was a set of two hate-messages from two of my friends… both Hindus, highly qualified, with teenaged children, living in decent housing societies. I have known these two friends of mine for over fifteen years, and observed, that they bore a deep dislike for each other. Interestingly, today, when I read their messages on social media, I could make out what made them look alike - their chronic hatred for the Muslim community! I unfollowed both of them, instantly! No, there is no vaccine for this virus. Corona may come and go – maybe, taking with it countless lives away, without checking on their class, caste, colour or creed. But, this virus – stemming from human bias of discrimination and hatred – will never, ever go from the system of many of us… many are our own, dear and near ones! Sad! Sad! Sad! All our so-called e...